Insurgent Archives: Palestinian Cinema and Solidarity

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, we, as Palestinians, have found ourselves grappling with difficult questions posed by artists and cultural workers on how to stand with Palestine meaningfully. In an era of neoliberalism and imperial hegemony and decades of severed grassroots connections between Palestinians and other nations, the answer to this question is neither simple nor straightforward. It is at these times that we turn to legacies of past solidarity with Palestine, searching for daring historical models that might offer insights for the present.

In the context of cinema, one cannot overlook the solidarity networks that played a crucial role in salvaging early films about Palestine, many produced by the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Film Unit and long believed lost during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This article explores how the global solidarity with Palestinians helped preserve copies of lost films, functioning as insurgent archives especially as the Israeli occupation not only attempts to shape the history of Palestinians but also tries to dictate how the present will be remembered. 

The Palestinian cinema emerged within the broader landscape of political cinema movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s around the world. However, it was distinct as it operated within a national liberation movement for a stateless people. Until the early 1980s, Palestinian cinema remained part of the PLO, shaped by its shifting political dynamics.¹ The PLO’s Film Unit (PFU), founded by filmmakers Mustafa Abu Ali, Hani Jawhariyya, and Sulafa Jadallah in 1969, documented and promoted the Palestinian struggle while transforming the Unit into a hub for international activist filmmakers. In addition, the Palestinian factions produced several films taking similar approaches. It is estimated that about 50 documentaries were produced in Beirut up until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.² One of the Film Unit’s goals was to archive the Palestinian struggle for liberation for future generations, and in anticipation of a time when Palestine becomes an independent state.³ Artists and activists from Argentina, France, Chile, Cuba, and Italy captured details of the Palestinian struggle and produced films in solidarity. 

Beyond producing and archiving films, the PFU actively distributed footage of its own films and the ones about Palestine made by international filmmakers to anyone who needed to screen them.⁴ Activists and solidarity groups often added introductions, voiceovers, and translations in different languages. These films were shown in Beirut but also participated in international film festivals, where some even won awards. 

The prestigious Leipzig Film Festival for Documentaries and Short Films screened al-Nahr al-barid (1971) by Iraqi writer and director Kassem Hawal in 1971. His film Buyutuna al-saghira (Our Small Houses, 1974) won the Silver Dove Award at the same festival in 1974.⁵ Mustafa Abu Ali’s Lays lahum wujud (They Do Not Exist, 1974) was also screened at Leipzig Film Festival in 1974.⁶ At the same festival, Qays Al-Zubaydi won the Silver Prize for Ba’idan ‘an al-watan (Far Away from Home, 1969).⁷ Abu Ali’s ‘Udwan sayhuni (Zionist Aggression, 1972) won the Symposium Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic in 1974. Ru’a filastiniya (Palestinian Visions, 1977) by Adnan Madanat and ‘Atfal walakin (Children Without Childhood, 1980) by Khadijeh Habashneh participated in the 1981 Moscow Film Festival.⁸ PFU films were also screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in Germany.⁹

PFU productions also gained recognition across the Arab world, winning awards at reputable festivals such as the Baghdad International Film Festival, the Damascus International Festival for Youth Cinema, the Carthage Film Festival in Tunis, the Algiers Film Festival, as well as festivals in Cairo and Morocco.¹⁰ In 1972, Mustaf Abu Ali’s Bilruh bildam (With Soul, With Blood, 1971) won a documentary award at the Damascus International Festival for Youth Cinema,¹¹ screening alongside his film La lilhal al-silmi (The Armed Revolutionary People Say: No to a Peaceful Solution, 1969).¹²  

Palestina, otro Vietnam (Palestine, Another Vietnam, 1972), directed by Argentinian filmmakers Jorge Denti and Jorge Giannoni from the Third World Film Collective, won an award at the Cinema and Television Festival in Baghdad in 1973, after Abu Ali submitted the film to the festival.¹³ Abu Ali’s Mashahid min al-‘ihtilal fi gaza (Scenes from the Occupation in Gaza, 1973) received the Golden Award at the Baghdad International Festival in March 1973. In 1975, Qays Al Zubaydi’s Nida’ al-’ard (The Call of the Earth, 1975) won three awards at the same festival.¹⁴ In 1980, Children Without Childhood, by Khadijeh Habashneh received a special mention from the jury at the Baghdad International Festival for Films and TV Programs on Palestine.¹⁵ Abu Ali’s documentary Tal Al-Zaatar (1977), co-directed with Pino Adriano and Jean Chamoun, won the Arab Critics’ Prize at the Carthage Film Festival. The film documented the massacre of Tal Al-Zaatar, where over 1,000 Palestinians were killed during the Lebanese Civil War. 

Yet, the cinema created by the Unit ultimately vanished during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Habashneh, who was part of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and helped relocate the cinema archive to a safer location in Beirut’s Al Hamra area in 1981, just before the Israeli invasion, recalled that, “thousands of films were stored in cans that filled three rooms from floor to ceiling shelves. They were a record of Palestinian history full of political cinema, documentation of the struggle, the resistance movements, daily life, and historical footage.”¹⁶  

In Kings and Extras: Digging for a Palestinian Image (2004), filmmaker Azza Al Hassan starts a journey to uncover the fate of the missing PLO cinema archive. The quest evolves into a meditation on the fragility of collective narratives and the interplay between absence and presence in Palestinian history. A lingering question emerges as the film concludes: Are these films truly lost?

The answer came in 2017 when Israeli filmmaker Rona Sela revealed in her documentary Looted and Hidden: Palestinian Archives in Israel that these films were looted and concealed by Israel. Yet, while Sela gained access to these materials and used segments of them, Palestinians continue to be denied the right to view their own archive. But why must Palestinians rely on an Israeli researcher to see their own history? Which parts did Sela choose to screen, and which did she omit? Sela’s work exposes the colonial power dynamics, where even Palestinian memory is mediated through Israeli control. Ironically, while the archives physically exist, they remain inaccessible to their rightful owners, meaning effectively that they are still “missing”. 

The targeting of Palestinian archives is not incidental but part of a long-standing Israeli strategy of erasure. The Nakba of 1948 marked the first systematic looting of Palestinian books and manuscripts. Entire private libraries were confiscated, while countless documents, artworks,¹⁷ and artifacts were either destroyed or disappeared into Israeli institutions, inaccessible to Palestinians.¹⁸ During the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli army looted 25,000 volumes, microfilms, manuscripts, and a printing press belonging to the Palestine Research Center.¹⁹ The destruction of archives has continued beyond that date, even beyond the Peace Agreement between Israel and the PLO (1995). 

As the PLO transitioned into the Palestinian Authority, operating under Israeli occupation while projecting the illusion of sovereignty, many documentation materials were gathered in central sites only to become easy targets for destruction and erasure. For instance, the archives of the Orient House in Jerusalem were looted by the Israeli army in 2001,²⁰ while several media institutions in Ramallah were raided in 2002, resulting in the destruction and confiscation of invaluable recordings, videos, and documents.²¹ In 2021, an airstrike on Al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza wiped out decades of media archives, and in 2022, Israeli forces raided leading Palestinian human rights organisations, confiscating computers, files, and other materials. Most recently, Gaza’s municipal archive, housing over 110,000 historical documents, was destroyed in Israeli airstrikes.²² These actions are part of a broader campaign to erase Palestinian culture and narration and include institutions, museums, heritage sites, cultural centres, cinema halls, and other sites of cultural heritage and collective memory. 

According to the Israeli media, since the Nakba, Israel has confiscated approximately 38,000 films, 2.7 million photographs, 96,000 audio recordings, and 46,000 maps and aerial photos, all of which are stored in a central military archive outside Tel Aviv. However, the film archive looted from Beirut is not included in this collection, as its exact size and contents remain unknown. Israeli sources, however, state that it contains 642 “war booty films,” many of which were produced by UNRWA in the 1960s and 1970s.²³ The materials in the archive have been re-catalogued through a colonial lens, where Palestinian fighters were reclassified as “gangs” or “terrorists”, and Palestinians’ armed training was labelled as “terrorist camps”.²⁴

Static vs Living Archives

Palestinians historically adopted a “traditional” model of archives for preserving records, even though this model needs sovereignty for their protection, something impossible under colonial rule, where both the colonised and their narratives remain targets of erasure. A different approach might be needed in this case, one able to maintain their safety and take them to another level of narration. What matters in this sense is to develop alternative methods of keeping those records, perhaps in the form of “insurgent” archives. Rather than replicating static structures, Palestinian “archives” must be similar to the fugitive state they live in, it should be fluid, adaptable, and scattered to ensure their survival. Yet, this is not to suggest that the looted archives should not be returned; the rights to these documents rightfully belong to the Palestinian people.

Throughout history, Palestinians have turned to the earth as a safe place to hide their most valuable belongings, believing that the earth doesn’t tell its secrets. Treasures were hidden in jars and buried in the earth to secure them from robbers, but this was also practiced during the years of occupation. In the first Intifada, Fahed Alhaj, director of the Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoners, managed to smuggle documents written by many prisoners during his imprisonment.²⁵ Upon his release during the Intifada, he collected these documents, and buried them in the earth for protection. In 1997, shortly after the Oslo Agreement, the museum was established using these materials, which had survived multiple Israeli raids on Alhaj’s home. Alhaj emphasises that he keeps multiple copies as long as Palestinians remain under occupation.²⁶ 

Despite continuous targeting, Palestinians persist in uncovering and reviving lost history. Several filmmakers have sought missing cinema archives, driven by curiosity to learn more about their history and perhaps based on the feeling that Palestinian past narrative should be salvaged so the story continues, but most importantly, by intervening in this history and showing its different aspects. As they search, more lost films emerge.

In 2006, shortly before passing away, Mustafa Abu Ali organised a cinema group whose intention was to start looking for missing films around the world.²⁷ Khadijeh Habashneh, his former wife and colleague, continued the mission and, by 2016, collected around 40 films made by PFU from a variety of places.²⁸

The solidarity cinema network of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s played a crucial role in salvaging Palestinian films lost after the looting of the cinema archive. These films continue to resurface in unexpected places, revealing a lasting impact of the international solidarity efforts that preserved some Palestinian films, perhaps unintentionally. When artist Emily Jacir uncovered the original rushes of the documentary Tal al-Zaatar in an Italian archive, she exposed the hidden role of transnational networks in safeguarding Palestinian records. In 2004, Jacir found these rushes in the Audiovisual Archive of the Democratic and Labour Movement (AAMOD) which were inherited from the Italian Communist Party, where they had remained in storage for 36 years. Tal al-Zaatar, a co-production between the Palestinian Cinema Institution and Unitelefilm, required extensive restoration, which Jacir and Monica Maurer, the activist film director from Germany who worked with the Palestinian Film Unit in the seventies, undertook before screening the film in multiple locations.²⁹ Additional Palestinian films were also discovered in the same archive, all either filmed by Italians or produced as Italian-Palestinian collaborations.

“Solidarity”, a poster by the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students, 1977-1978. The Ali Kazak Collection, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.

This was not the only instance where lost films were preserved within international archives. In 2015, filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi directed Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory, a documentary that reflects on the Palestinian struggle to produce self-representations on their own terms in the 1960s and 1970s, following the establishment of the PFU. The film emerged after extensive research in archives scattered across Paris, Rome, London, Amman, and Beirut. The investigations led to an unexpected realisation: many copies of the looted films survived thanks to the solidarity networks that had supported the Palestinian struggle.

By tracing rushes from 36 films, it was revealed how each film was reproduced in 60 to 70 copies and distributed to universities, student unions, workers’ collectives, political parties, and film festivals.³⁰ Using the 16mm format and portable projectors, the PLO Film Unit ensured that these films could be screened anywhere; factories, classrooms, refugee camps. This strategy was part of a larger effort to educate global audiences about the Palestinian cause and mobilise support through cinema, demonstrating how solidarity itself became an alternative fluid archival structure, sustaining the memory of Palestinian cinema of resistance despite colonial erasure.³¹

The lost films have also re-appeared in the private homes of activists. In 2017, Subversive Film (a cinema research and production collective) came face to face with another film collection of 20 films in Japan which they restored and published an online inventory of them, calling them later Tokyo Reels. This incident illustrated how solidarity was not just a political stance but transformed into an active archival practice yet a non-static one. These films, safeguarded for decades by a Japanese activist, represent a parallel history of Palestinian cinema, one preserved not in traditional archives but in the hands of those who believed in the struggle. The films on Palestine were screened in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s and were altered by adding introductions and translations to the Japanese language. By modifying these films, they were kept alive. The list of found films consisted of rare titles that go back to the 1970s and early 1980s including documentaries and shorts that discuss the Palestinian revolution. Amongst them are two films that appear for the first time: Yawm al-‘ard (Land Day, 1983) by Ghaleb Shaath and Alharb fi lubnan (War in Lebanon, 1976), by Bakr Sharqawi.³²

The re-emerging of lost Palestinian history was not confined to cinema; it also appeared in the arts. “I’ve been waiting for you for 30 years.” With these words, French artist Claude Lazar welcomed researchers Rasha Salti and Kristine Khoury, to his home in France, handing them three boxes filled with materials, including photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents.³³ It was the first time Salti and Khoury had seen images of the 1978 exhibition in solidarity with Palestine which they had long been researching. The exhibition which was a fruit of donations from artists around the world disappeared during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, with Lazar’s collection of documentation remaining one of the few surviving records of its existence.

Activist filmmakers who belonged to the leftist parties and political alliances like the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), helped document the Palestinian struggle as part of documenting just struggles in the world. Films on Palestine that were captured in the 1960s could be found in the Yugoslav Newsreels in Belgrade. For instance, films like Blood and Tears (1972) shot by Stevan Labudović, a cameraman who had worked for Yugoslav Newsreels, were used by the PLO to promote the Palestinian struggle and were circulated on different platforms such as the UN and political events.³⁴ It was also listed in one of the books of the late Iraqi filmmaker Qays Al-Zubaydi mentioned below.

Individual filmmakers, such as Al-Zubaydi, have also played an important role in documenting Palestinian cinema. Al-Zubaydi, who worked closely with the PLO in Beirut during the 1970s, directed and produced several films such as Away from Home 1969 and Al-Ziyarah (The Visit, 1970). More recently, he took it upon himself to collect and preserve copies of the scattered films on Palestine around the world. He deposited the films he found in the Department for the Preservation of Heritage and Culture at the German Foreign Ministry, in an attempt to ensure their survival. In total, he documented and archived 70 films produced from 1970 onward.³⁵

As part of his archival efforts, Al-Zubaydi authored two volumes: Filasṭin fi al-sinima (2006) and Filasṭin fi al-sinima (2): al-dhakirah wa-al-hawiyah (2019) (Palestine in Cinema from 2006 and Palestine in Cinema (2): Memory and Identity from 2019). These books provide a comprehensive catalogue of films about Palestine. The first volume documents nearly a century of cinematic portrayals of Palestine, from the Balfour Declaration to the Jenin massacre in 2002, listing approximately 800 films by Palestinian, Arab, and international filmmakers. These works span various formats, short and feature-length, narrative and documentary, capturing the many tragedies that have shaped Palestinian history.³⁶

In an interview before passing away, Al-Zubaydi said: “I discovered that there were many European films that dealt with Palestine in various forms and styles, produced by directors in France, Denmark, Germany, England, Holland, other European countries and Canada, films that were unknown in the Arab world. No one knew that there were films about Palestine in Canada, for example. The available information did not include the slightest mention in this area, but chance played a role in that, when I realised during a visit there that such films existed, I worked to obtain them, and I managed to purchase the rights to only seven films.”³⁷

Al-Zubaydi took it upon himself to highlight the overlooked presence of European and Canadian films about Palestine, emphasising the lack of accessibility and the role of chance in finding them. He also played an active role in cataloguing this scattered archive. These films, that Al-Zubaydi came across by coincidence, deserve greater attention and dedicated efforts to facilitate their dissemination and screening. 

The looted cinema archive suggests the possibility of recovery. In Palestinian Cinema in Days of Revolution (2018), Nadia Yaqub notes that the Palestinian cinema archive remains scattered but retrievable, as copies of films were distributed globally to PLO offices, allies, and film festivals, with some still housed in cultural centres, libraries, and embassies. She emphasises that efforts to recover these dispersed materials are not merely nostalgic but carry significant meaning within the context of Palestinian post-Oslo politics, aiming not only to document but also “to actively recover the points of commonality that linked leftist movements of the past.”³⁸

“Palestine”, a poster issued by the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, designed by Cuban artist Rafael Enriquez, 1984. The Ali Kazak Collection, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.

Archives as Sites of Resistance

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon emphasises the importance of cultural production in the process of liberation, asserting that reclaiming one’s culture and history is a critical step in the fight for freedom.³⁹ The efforts to safeguard Palestinian cultural memory, in the face of destruction and loss, is a form of resistance. 

For the oppressed, archives are not just passive collections of documents, but they are active sites of resistance and struggle. The process of archiving itself becomes a dynamic act of defying control and geographical confinement. Many films from the Palestinian cinema archive of the 1970s have survived precisely because of global solidarity or seeking to connect with a global audience. Their existence in places like Italy, Japan and elsewhere attests to the transnational nature of the Palestinian struggle during that era.

These threatened archives not only safeguard and narrate histories that are targeted or marginalised by colonial powers, but also embody artistic interventions that have kept lived history alive. These interventions do more than resist erasure, they go beyond mere documentation, as they continue transforming within collective memory to narrate multiple aspects of the Palestinian struggle.

The recent destruction of cultural institutions in Gaza, including museums, libraries, and press offices, is a stark reminder that the erasure of Palestinian memory is systematic and continuous. Under constant threat, Palestinian archives must embrace alternative paths. An “insurgent” approach to preserving cinema, rather than replicating static archival models, is now more important than ever. After restoring Tokyo Reels, Subversive Film made copies of the entire 20-film collection and sent them back to the Japanese activist who had safeguarded them, ensuring their return to their original hiding place. They then created a 21st film that Mohanad Yaqubi directed and included various scenes from the Tokyo Reels archive, engaging with different aspects of the Palestinian liberation struggle and including a detailed account of the restoration process. As a final act of solidarity, Subversive Film gifted the 21st film to the activist who had discovered the collection, embedding it within the archive itself.⁴⁰

Viewing Palestinian archives in an insurgent lens would not only safeguard against the threat of obliteration, but also will bring about alternative practices, that will “create material conditions for resuscitating knowledge about traditions in anti-colonial resistance.”⁴¹ It also will demonstrate “the central role of solidarity, both as an infrastructure, indispensable to this culture, and as a goal that motivates it.”⁴² Therefore, looking at the past becomes a means to comprehend and absorb relevant lessons for the present. As history shows, archives, embedded within networks of solidarity, do not simply disappear; they re-emerge, persist, and transform. As Israel continues with its ethnic cleansing project, solidarity with Palestine cannot be reduced to symbolic gestures or institutional statements. It must be a living practice, learning from past struggles while resisting appropriation by neoliberal agendas that depoliticise and dilute its meaning. The challenge before artists and cultural workers is not just to express support but to actively engage in structures that resist the erasure of the oppressed: preserving, circulating, and participating in rebuilding the insurgent archives of Palestine.

Endnotes